Focus - N.2
June 1996

TO ALL THE PEOPLE THAT ARE GOING TO THE HABITAT II CONFERENCE:
HAVE A NICE STAY IN ISTANBUL!

NEW PAGES ADDED

• SANCO
  We are very pleased to announce that we are hosting the home page of the DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN CIVIC ORGANISATION (SANCO)

NEW LINKS

Thanks to all the people that signaled us new sites of interest!
Here is the list of the new additions:

• INTERNACTION
  http://www.interaction.org
  InterAction is a coalition of over 150 US-based NGOs working in disaster response, refugee-assistance and development throughout the world.
• LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE
  http://www.ina.fr/CP/MondeDiplo/mondediplo.fr.html You'll find many interesting articles published by this quality magazine. In addition, the Monde Diplomatique opened a discussion list about "the internet and the south". You can subscirbe to it by sending an e-mail to Majordomo@ina.fr and writing "subscribe nsnet-diplo" in the body of the message. You can also have access to the archives of the list through the WWW.
• THE WWW VIRTUAL LIBRARY: INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT CO-OPERATION
  http://alcazar.com/wwwvl_idc/
  Links to many sites
• HUNGER WEB
  http://www.brown.edu/Departments/World_Hunger_Program/
  HungerWeb is a project of the Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Program at the Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University. Its aim is to help prevent and eradicate hunger by facilitating the free exchange of ideas and information regarding the causes of, and solutions to, hunger. It contains both primary information, made available by the World Hunger Program and its partners, and links to other sites where information of relevance to hunger can be found.
• ASIAN DEVELOPMENT BANK
  http://www.asiandevbank.org/
  The site of the Asian Development Bank.
• INTER AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK
  http://www.iadb.org/IDB/Text/IDBText.html
  the site of the Inter-american development bank.
• ORSTOM
  http://www.orstom.fr/welcome.html
  L'Institut français de recherche scientifique pour le développement en coopération.
• THE RIGHT MARGIN FOUNDATION
  http://alcazar.com/rm/
  The Right Margin Foundation collects second-hand computers and uses them to set up computerschools in developing countries.
• TOOLNET
  http://www.tool.nl/~toolnet/
  TOOLnet aims at stimulating the spread of telematics in the South. A major aspect in this policy is contributing to local institution building.
• AIT - ASIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
  http://emailhost.ait.ac.th/
  The essential concerns of the School of Environment, Resources and Development (http://emailhost.ait.ac.th/AIT/schools/serd.html) of the AIT are for the environment, in its broadest multidisciplinary scope, for effective resource use, processing and transformation, and for sustainable development. The school offers a course on "Urban Planning, Land & Housing Development".
• Ark III - Architecture and Development Studies - LCHS - Lund Centre for Habitat Studies
  http://www.ark3.lth.se/Ark3lchs.htm
  ArkIII carries out research and offers training at undergraduate and post-graduate levels. The main focus is architectural design and planning in countries that are different from Sweden in terms of housing, architecture, climate and culture. LCHS has three main duties: to act as contact interface for initiating, promoting and coordinating overseas-related research within different subjects at the School of Architecture and the School of Civil Engineering, to conduct its own applied research programmes, and to organize in-service and postgraduate training.
• CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGY Georgia Institute of Technology
  http://www.ce.gatech.edu/Centers/CST/CST.html
  The Center for Sustainable Technology (CST) at the Georgia Institute of Technology was created in 1993, in collaboration with the World Engineering Partnership for Sustainable Development, to help engineers and other professionals respond to the challenge of sustainable development, through a vision of sustainable technology.
• ARCHITECTURE AND BUILDING
  http://www.tue.nl/lava/other/brown/
  This guide - compiled by Jeanne M. Brown, Architecture Studies Librarian University of Nevada, Las Vegas - covers primarily architecture, building, construction, and AEC sites, as well as design, real estate, housing, urban, energy, and environment sites to a lesser extent. This is the fifth edition, July 1995.
• INTERNATIONAL PLANNING RESOURCES
  http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/ENVI/cityintl.html
  This site, maintained by Debbie Sommer, planning librarian at UC Berkeley includes links to Internet sites in the following categories - Gender and Development; International Data and Statistics Sources; International Organizations; Non-governmental Organizations; Online Publications; Regional Resources and International Development; and Research Guides.
• PAIRC - PLANNING AND ARCHITECTURE INTERNET RESOURCE CENTER
  http://www.arch.buffalo.edu/pairc/
  PAIRC now contains links to over 2,200 Web, Gopher and FTP sites with urban planning, architecture and landscape architecture related information. Most links have annotated descriptions. PAIRC also contains information about 110 architecture and planning related mailing lists.
• WWW VIRTUAL LIBRARY
  http://www.clr.toronto.edu:1080/VIRTUALLIB/arch.html
  The primary point of focus for this library is the collection of references to the electronic resources on the internet.
• SOUTHLINKS - United Nations Volunteers
  http://www.unv.org/projects/sl.htm
  Southlinks is a project of United Nations Volunteers with resource centres in India, South Africa and Colombia. The objective of the project is to stimulate the exchange of information generated by grass roots practitioners through their actions, experiences and observations. This information should comply with two basic objectives: it should be immediately useful for action and it should have the necessary elements to establish new linkages between organizations working in the same fields. The information "units" thus produced should circulate in the form of stories, akin to the oral tradition of the people and to the journalistic style.
• HOUSING RESEARCH
  http://www.arch.cuhk.hk/main/index.htm
  In its ARCHITECTURAL INFORMATION SYSTEM, the University of Hong Kong will discuss the main issues concerning the public and private housing in Hong Kong or Mainland China.
• MEGACITIES 2000
  http://valley.interact.nl/MEGACITIES
  The Megacities initiative originates from the awareness of the future role of cities as the dominant type of settlement for humanity. The initiators of Megacities aim to assemble knowledge and understanding, for all imaginable disciplines, in an attempt to draw up a 'Codex megacities', somewhat comparable in terms of approach and ambition to the CIAM movement, but then adapted to world-wide cultural and economic diversity and using modern techniques of communication, such as Internet's World Wide Web.

NEWs

WORLD BANK'S TECHNET: THINK TANK ELECTRONIC CONFERENCES

A Think Tank is a conference discussion that is conducted entirely through electronic means. Approximately 20 experts from government, private sector, academia, NGOs, international organizations and World Bank will discuss each topic for a period of four weeks. The discussion will be "broadcast only" to subscribers, but readers are encouraged to comment and to ask questions.
During the next six months, five Think Tanks will be initiated. The first Think Tank is on "Learning Nations: How Developing Countries Acquire and Diffuse Knowledge".

To participate in the Think Tank on Learning Nations: How Developing Countries Acquire and Diffuse Knowledge, you must subscribe by visiting the TechNet Web site:
http://www.worldbank.org/html/fpd/technet/ or by sending an email message as follows:
To: listproc@vita.org
Subject: (Leave Blank)
Text: sub knowled FirstName LastName

FOCUS, newsletter of the Forum on developing countries